There was a time in the mid-20th century when an author named Erle Stanley Gardner sold more books than anyone else. Gardner was primarily famous for his novels about Perry Mason, an iconic criminal defense attorney, and the Cool & Lam private detective series, which he wrote under the pen name “A. A. Fair.” One could walk into any drugstore or supermarket in the country and find several titles in both series at any given time. Gardner, alas, is no longer with us, but thanks to the indispensable Hard Case Crime imprint, his work, particularly that which is harder to find (if available at all), lives on.

Last year, Hard Case Crime published THE KNIFE SLIPPED, a Cool & Lam novel. It was noteworthy for many reasons, one of them being that it had never seen the light of day previously, having been rejected by the publisher. Fair was nothing if not prolific; he turned the other cheek and wrote TURN ON THE HEAT, which released in 1940 and remained in print for another quarter-century. It has languished, undeservedly, in limbo until now, published in an edition that does justice to its creator and its protagonists.

"If you want a glimpse into what fiction used to be, and may be again, look no further than TURN ON THE HEAT. It is a gem."

Bertha Cool and Donald Lam were far ahead of their time. Cool was a tight-fisted operator of a detective agency who could squeeze a nickel until the buffalo screamed...unless, of course, she was spending money on herself. Lam was her operative, a disbarred attorney who came to her in desperation looking for work. Their collaborative effort was told over the course of 29 books, and the newly republished TURN ON THE HEAT is considered by many to be the best of them. While it most definitely is correctly classified as a mystery, it contains elements borrowed from the crime and even political thriller subgenres, resulting in a novel that reads as if Fair typed it with one hand while holding a stopwatch in the other.

The book begins with an enigmatic “Mr. Smith” retaining the agency to locate a woman named Amelia Lintig, who seemingly vanished 21 years before from a small California town called Oakview (apparently no relation to Oak View). Amelia had been married to Dr. Donald Lintig at the time, but filed for divorce by virtue of his having an affair with his nurse. Lam gets on the job immediately, discovering that the divorce was never finalized and that Amelia’s last act lo those many years ago was to take a train to San Francisco.

Time may have passed, but there are still those who don’t want Lam nosing around, as he soon discovers when he is violently warned off by a corrupt cop. Lam is not a physical fighter, but he is as tenacious as they come, and it is quickly demonstrated that it takes more than a beating and kidnapping to dissuade him off of a case. Of course, in 1940 he did not have the benefit of the internet, television, cell phones or the like to research his case, thus part of the entertainment of reading TURN ON THE HEAT is discovering (or, in the case of older readers, being reminded of) how the job was done back in the day.

Lam finds out much more than he was originally hired to uncover, and the repartee between himself and Cool over the cost of a telegram or a meal is interesting and expected by those familiar with the series. When Cool laments that her agency was a quiet one before Lam came along and started dragging it into missing persons cases and, yes, murders, one can almost tell she is only joking. Maybe. By the end of the book, Cool and Lam have achieved what they set out to do at the beginning --- at least to the spirit, if not the letter, of their intent. And delightfully so.

Pure private detective fiction does not quite get the respect and attention that it should in these days of unreliable narrators with substance abuse problems who cannot trust their own eyes, and it is unfortunate. If you want a glimpse into what fiction used to be, and may be again, look no further than TURN ON THE HEAT. It is a gem.